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Why Clients Fire Firms
In most legal markets, but especially the current one, law firms want to keep their clients. It's an obvious goal and one that, for the most part, they reach. But not always. The separations can be painful, costly on the margins, and, if the firm is paying attention, instructive. So why are firms losing important, blue-chip clients? Let us count the ways:
- “They were doing a bad job: no results and a lot of invoices.”
- “Poor service. Lots of delay. When challenged, they were completely up front and just said [they] don't have enough resources, which is pretty astonishing for an international law firm.”
- “It has to do with quality and price. We paid thirty or forty thousand euros, more or less for nothing. So, they had to go.”
- “The main client relationship [partner] left the firm. I find that often when partners leave, those firms neglect to contact clients to say we still want your business and we have signed a new relationship manager. They tend not to correspond with you. Yet the partner who leaves always contacts you from the new firm.”
- “There was a severe lack of relationship between what the bills were and what the value delivered was.”
The Survey
The quotes come from a new report by Acritas, the UK-based market research firm. They are verbatim responses from aggrieved in-house lawyers who were explaining why they stopped using a law firm. Working from a call center in Newcastle, Acritas interviews a couple thousand general counsel in about 45 countries each year on their experiences with the law firms they've hired. From this research they compile a ranking of law firm brands and ask a variety of questions about the attitudes and practices of clients and their legal service providers. This year they asked about firing firms.
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